My family was never the type to be affectionate. I’ve heard countless jokes about how that’s just the way Asian families are. They’re stone-cold, and they’ll never tell you “I love you” unless you score really high on the SAT but even then, you might just get a gruff nod of approval. I know that’s not true of every Asian household. I’ve seen how it varies among my friends’ families. But for me, my home has never invoked warm memories, and it still doesn’t.
From what I can remember, it was pretty rare for my parents to ever hug me or tell me that they love me, and it became even rarer as I got older. I was never sad about this though; I thought it was normal. In fact, my siblings and I grew up thinking that being affectionate was sort of cringe.
I know that families show their love in different ways, and that’s okay. But growing up, I struggled with how to express my emotions. While I love my family to death, I have to say that we suck at dealing with our feelings. We struggle with validating our negative emotions and acknowledging mental health issues. Instead, we like to sweep things under the rug and try to move on with our lives. Part of what made things difficult was certain family conflicts that led my dad to become estranged.
My dad became colder and angrier, and he began to take his feelings out on the rest of the family. I remember that if I ever tried to tell him how I felt in response to his anger, I was immediately shut down. I remember that it was always difficult for my siblings to approach him about mental health struggles. Crying became taboo, a sign of weakness and immaturity, so I became an expert at holding back my tears. My mom did her best to love us in any way she could, but she had her own struggles to deal with and I never wanted to bother her. The easiest thing to do was to bottle everything up.
I never thought that how I grew up would have an impact on my life. I ended up doing exactly what my family did and just swept everything under the rug, and it became easier to do when I left for college. At school, it was out of sight, out of mind; I could forget about the issues that I had left behind. What I didn’t know was that until you make peace with it, your family and all of the issues attached will follow you wherever you go.
Someone once told me that growing numb to my family’s problems wouldn’t fix anything. If anything, it would affect my future relationships, and she was right. This became especially apparent when I got into my first romantic relationship. My boyfriend and I have been together for over a year now, and a lot has changed since then, but I remember in the beginning it was really hard for me to be affectionate with him, physically and emotionally. It felt awkward and unnatural, and I also didn’t know how to receive the affection he gave me.
My relationship highlighted the trust issues that I had harbored. My boyfriend was always ready to hear me out. He wanted me to feel comfortable with confiding in him about everything, the good and the bad, but it was hard for me to open up to him when I was accustomed to bottling things up. I realized that I was struggling to let him love me in the way that I deserve.
Beyond my romantic relationship, my experience with my family has even affected my relationships with my friends. I was afraid to be vulnerable with my closest friends because I was afraid of how they would react. Subconsciously, I was worried that they would react in the same way that my dad would, that I was making a big deal out of nothing or that my feelings were wrong. Again, I was refusing to accept the love that my friends would give me. But they were relentless in loving me, and this chipped away at the walls that I had built up.
My family is still dealing with certain issues, but I can say that I’ve come a long way. For a long time, my relationship with my dad left a scar on my life, but other relationships have filled that hole. Those relationships have reminded me time and time again that my feelings are valid and that I am loved.